WHEN Theresa Brasier met Philip May at a Conservative Party student disco at Oxford University in 1976 he was the one who was being marked out for a life climbing the greasy pole.

Theresa May with husband Philip, who had been tipped for political greatness

Philip was seen as more of a political animal and he went on to become president of the Oxford Union, a common springboard to a career in government.

When he got a job as a trainee analyst with a blue-chip fund management company in the City his future looked assured. “Everyone had pencilled in Theresa’s career,” says one contemporary.

“She would be the helpmeet of a bloke who, after a glittering career in the City, would go into politics. You have got to remember that Mrs Thatcher had yet to become prime minister and the idea of women making it in politics was a novelty.”

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Fast forward 40 years, however, and things have turned out very differently. It is the vicar’s daughter who has turned out to have far more fi e in her belly than anyone imagined and Philip is set to become the Denis Thatcher figure.

He is supportive but not competitive

“He is supportive but not competitive,” says one friend. “He is reserved, kind, polite. He is also a bit shy.”

The only daughter of the Reverend Hubert Brasier and his wife Zaidee became a Conservative as a teenager but was banned by her father from canvassing in his parish for fear she would compromise his political impartiality as a man of the cloth.

Once Mrs May went to Oxford to read geography at St Hugh’s College in 1974, however, she was under no such constraints. Friends say that she had ambitions to become prime minister even then.

She and Philip were introduced by Benazir Bhutto, who went on to become prime minister of Pakistan before being assassinated in 2007. The pair bonded over politics but also a shared love of cricket. To this day Mrs May cites the legendary Yorkshire and England opening batsman Geoffrey Boycott as one of her heroes.

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Theresa in 1961 with her parents Hubert and Zaidee

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Theresa and Philip May's wedding in September 1980

Philip was younger than his future wife and still had two years to go when she graduated in 1977 and went to work for the Bank of England. They married a year after he graduated – but only after Theresa had put a stop to his foot-dragging, according to a diary item in the student newspaper Cherwell.

It jokingly suggested that she warned him she would end it “if he hesitates any longer in announcing his intention to make an honest woman of the vicar’s daughter”. They were married in 1980 at her father’s church St Mary the Virgin in Wheatley, Oxfordshire.

But tragedy was to strike the very next year. The 64-year-old Rev Brasier was killed in a car crash while attempting to cross the busy A40 on his way to conduct a service. His Morris Marina was struck by a Range Rover and he died a few hours later.

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Theresa May walking the Hohbalmen above Zermatt

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Mrs May was the first female chairman of the Conservative Party

Mrs May’s mother, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis, died shortly afterwards. Losing both parents at the age of 25 just a year into her marriage was a terrible blow only leavened by the love and support of her new husband.

“That was very important for me,” she told Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “He was a real rock for me.”

At this point some say Philip was still the one most likely to pursue a career in politics but after Mrs May was elected to Merton Borough Council in 1986 she developed a passion for putting policies into action.

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Theresa and Philip May married a year after Philip graduated from Oxford

Her success in running schools as chairman of education stoked her political ambition and in 1992 she stood for parliament for the first time as the Conservative candidate in the North West Durham constituency. She failed to win that seat and lost again in 1994 when she contested a by-election in Barking.

But it proved to be third time lucky when she stood for Maidenhead in 1997 and won the seat she holds to this day. Unfortunately for her 1997 was the year of the first New Labour landslide under Tony Blair and she was doomed to what turned out to be 13 years in opposition before being given the chance of taking high office.

Mrs May entered the shadow cabinet in 1999 and went on to become the first female chairman of the Conservative Party in 2002.

It was when she addressed the party conference later that year that popular fascination with her expressive footwear first went into overdrive. While her claim that the Tories had become known as “the nasty party” made headlines so did the pair of leopard-print kitten heels she wore at the podium.

In the years that followed the interest in her shoes only grew more intense, culminating in one Tory supporter bidding £17,500 to go on a shoe-shopping trip with her. But the straitlaced Mrs May takes this obsession with her footwear in her stride: “I have no regrets [about being famous for my shoes]. The good thing is that they are often an icebreaker.”

Mrs May finally got the opportunity to put her politics into practice when she was made Home Secretary in 2010. She and Philip have never had any children.

“It just didn’t happen,” Mrs May once said. “This isn’t something I generally go into but things just turned out as they did.”

Some say it was the outrage that greeted Andrea Leadsom’s attempt to make political capital out of Mrs May’s childlessness that prompted her to quit the leadership race yesterday.

But whatever her motives, Leadsom’s decision handed a woman famed for her dedication and hard work the keys to Number 10 more than two months earlier than she expected.